


Incomplete

by PaintedHeart



Category: Broadchurch
Genre: Death, Friendship, Sad, Short, Unfinished Business
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-26
Updated: 2015-04-26
Packaged: 2018-03-25 19:25:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3821974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaintedHeart/pseuds/PaintedHeart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just a couple of vivid images I couldn't get out of my head...very short!  And pretty sad, sorry everyone!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Incomplete

He is lying on his back, thinking about unfinished business. God knows, he’s got more than his fair share. There is still a trial on, Joe Miller’s fate still in question. Lee Ashworth still free and Claire as well, Cate still without closure and Lisa still ‘missing.’ But he hopes that those things won’t keep him here. If his heart stops now, he wants to be free. It’s all he has left, the only selfish desire he has in him.

He thinks of Tess, but briefly. He loved her for so long, but even that has passed now. He’d thought he missed her, but he knows now that he only missed being a part of a family.

He thinks next of Ellie Miller...of his mother saying that God puts you in the right place whether you know it or not. She’d been right. He had thought that he couldn’t trust anyone when he’d arrived in Broadchurch. Ellie had proved him wrong time and again. She will carry on for him, after he has gone. His partner and one friend; she will not let him down. It gives him peace, thinking of that.

He thinks last of Daisy, and his one regret is that he may not see her grow up. He doesn’t want to cause her pain, no parent wants to do that to their child, but he hopes that should the worst happen, she will live enough for the both of them, keeping him alive in her memories as the father he’d been before Sandbrook, before Broadchurch. He will love her no matter what comes next, even if all that’s waiting is oblivion.

Last…as the room gets blurry at the edges and he starts to sink into unconsciousness, he hopes to be free from that bloody river at last. No more drowning.

****

-BC-

The words echo in her brain, rattling around in her empty skull as she drives home.

 _Sudden cardiac arrest_. Is there any other kind? Ellie’s hands are wrapped so tightly around the steering wheel that they ache, and her throat is in agony as she attempts to shove away her tears.

Her heart feels like it’s stopped along with his. Her only friend, her last ally. Gone…just slipped away on an operating table while chaos erupted around him.

She didn’t get to see him, but she can picture it. Can see him, too tall and too skinny and too still, growing cold.

The sobs come, wracking her so hard that she has to pull over. She climbs out of the car, unable to breathe in such a small space, but she only takes a few steps before she’s sitting on the ground, her grief expelling itself in huge waves of pain which hammer her body.

When it stops, when she can drag herself back to the car again, she makes a promise.

She will finish the bloody Sandbrook case, she will make sure that in the end, the killer is punished. And when it’s over, she will visit Hardy’s resting place and she will tell him that it’s done. And hopefully, wherever he is, he will hear her. And at last he will know that it is time to rest.


End file.
